Their interdisciplinary projects, under the supervision of Xunli Zhang, Bill Keevil, Eugen Stulz, Sandra Wilks, and Dario Carugo, are developing methods for producing controllable sized and shaped metal nanoparticles. In particular, their attention is focused on controlling the growth mechanism of triangular silver nanoparticles. Tom is using bacterial synthesis, testing several growth parameters as well as investigating the effect of nanoparticle protein coats. Complementing this, Andrea manufactured cost-effective continuous-flow reactors, aiming at the large-scale production and an accurate size control of the silver nanoprisms.

Their poster presents recent findings in the projects and emphasises the potential defence and civilian applications of the nanoparticles by exploiting their optical properties.